


Lost

by flyingllamas



Series: Lost [1]
Category: BEN Drowned, Creepypasta - Fandom, Lost Silver - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingllamas/pseuds/flyingllamas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was pretty sure death wasn't supposed to work like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost

_Sometime in the early 2000's..._

He was fairly sure death wasn't supposed to work like this.

Though Seth couldn't see anything at the moment, his eyes weren't taped shut at the beginning. After his heart stopped, his eyes still continued to move around and he tried desperately to make a sound, resulting in his murderer to freak out and tape both shut. Seth was in the back of the pickup truck which usually sat in his driveway after six o'clock, in a no-longer empty oil drum which used to sit out by the shed in his backyard. In one pocket, he could still feel the cartridge which caused his death. In the other, there was his purple GameBoy.

It was a strange thing, he mused, that he could still feel his limbs and torso even though an ax had cut them to pieces. It'd taken so long for the ax to hack through his legs and he screamed and screamed until his throat was raw. Part of him felt a bitter happiness his arms had taken less time.

“It'll be easier for the coyotes to get rid of you,” his killer mumbled to him, “and you'll be less of a problem.”

Seth hadn't been able to respond vocally by that point, mouth taped shut, so he rolled his head back and forth until he felt the ax hack at his neck. It'd taken three hits for his neck and head to completely separate and each cut caused a new wave of agony to explode in his brain. Seth suspected his killer had been driven half insane by his inability to just _stop_ being, even after his lungs stopped expanding and his heart stilled, so he mumbled to ease his own troubled mind.

His murderer's mind was troubled before the murder, though. Each night he'd come home, get drunk and start yelling. Usually, Seth would hide in his room and play on his GameBoy. He'd wanted the new game which had just come out, complete with a pretty silver cartridge. His stepfather told him not to get such a sissy game, that it was for girls. He said he'd regret if he did, but Seth had saved up for weeks and gotten it. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, tipping his stepfather a little too far over the edge, a little too close to complete insanity.

The truck abruptly stopped and the oil drum slid forward and tipped over, jostling him and his pile of limbs. His fingernails scraped against the side of the barrel as he heard the door open and slam shut. Heavy footsteps reached his ears as the tailgate was pulled down. The bed of the truck dipped as his stepfather climbed up.

“No one will miss you,” the killer said. “You're such a piece of shit, I would be surprised if your own mother missed you.”

Seth's fingernails scratched again against the metal and his stepfather kicked the barrel.

“Shut up!” he hollered. “You're supposed to be dead! You're in pieces! You shouldn't be doing this! You're so fucked up you can't even die properly!”

His stepfather picked up the barrel and threw it out of the truck bed. Seth's head rolled out and he felt cool dirt against the side of his face. He heard a scrape of metal against metal against the bed of the truck.

“Aw, forget it,” his stepfather said. “I'm not even going to bother digging a hole for you. It'll take the coyotes longer to eat you if I do.”

Something clattered down and he heard his killer's boots hit the dirt as he jumped down from the truck bed. The tailgate slammed up and Seth heard him walk around and open the cab of the truck and climb in. The truck rumbled to life and the tires crunched against small rocks as it sped off.

For a while, Seth did nothing, still partly in shock of all that had happened. He could hear the yips of coyotes off in the distance and the cold seeped into his body. He figured he was probably in the desert, somewhere near the suburb he lived in Tucson. However, he soon heard small noises nearby, like tiny footsteps. Something was sniffing around nearby and it soon turned its attention to his head, snuffling right near his ear. Seth flailed his dismembered limbs in panic and the coyote ran off into the night, yipping.

Seth wiggled his arms towards his head and pushed it towards his torso, hoping to make it easier for whoever found his remains to identify him and bring his body back to his mom. To his surprise, he felt tendons and ligaments reach out and reattach his neck to his torso. It felt as though fire raced like a brand around where the ax hacked through.

Well, that was unexpected, but it opened up a whole new realm of possibilities. Slowly, his limbs inched back towards his torso like bloodied caterpillars, burning as they reattached themselves to his torso. Seth stiffly sat up and ripped the tape first off his eyes and then off his mouth, wincing as it pulled at his eyelids. He looked around.

His original assumption was right. He was somewhere in the middle of the desert, surrounded by sagebrush and rabbitfoot grass. The ground seemed purple under the full moon, and a soft breeze whispered through the sparse patches of grass. Something rustled behind him and Seth looked over his shoulder. The coyote from early cautiously peered around a large sagebrush bush, sizing up the threat of his former meal.

Seth shakily stood up and the coyote ran off yipping, recognizing Seth as a bigger predator than it was. Seth thought about his options. He could sit here and wait for someone to find him, or he could try to head back to town. Knowing his stepfather, he probably wasn't as far out as he thought he was. The man was lazy and had probably dumped him in an area that seemed desolate and out of the way. Seth decided he should try to walk back to town. There wasn't really any risk either way, seeing as his current state of being unable to die granted him immunity from anything that might happen to him. He began to walk.

Seth wandered across the desert for what seemed like an eternity before he saw a small fire with a car near it in the distance. As he approached the fire, he could see a group of teenagers with bottles in their hands, presumably beer. Seth's older brother, before he moved out and to another state, used to come out here to drink a lot. Seth crouched behind the car, thinking about how best to get help from these teens. He was probably covered in blood and looked like death warmed over, so he'd probably scare the shit out of them by just trying to talk to him. He let his hand rest on the back bumper of the car and suddenly felt a sensation like being dragged down into a whirlpool. Seth blinked.

When he opened his eyes again, it was like he was trapped in that movie that came out a couple of years before, _The Matrix_. Pieces of code floated around him and everything was silent. He could hear muted noises of the teenagers, much less clear than they'd been before. Seth heard them climb into the car and start it up. One of them turned on the radio and a whole stream of code floated by Seth, the code for the graphical user interface for the radio displaying the station. Was he in the car's central computing system? He knew they were just starting to put more advanced stuff into cars, but to have a full computer?

Seth wandered around the code, trying to find a way out. After over a half an hour, his hand finally touched a piece of code by accident, and he found himself in front of the car. The teenagers had made their way back to a small town Seth wasn't familiar with. The car was parked in a downtown business area and they were no where to be seen.

Seth carefully got to his feet, being careful not to touch the car again in fear of being sucked back into the car's computer system again. He caught a glimpse of himself in the reflection from a shop window. He was every bit as gruesome has he'd feared. He was coated with blood, especially around where the ax hacked through his limbs, and for some reason, blood started to leak out of his eyes like tears and trailed down his cheeks. He winced when it dripped onto his collarbone. He also wasn't wearing what he was when he died; instead, he wore an odd hooded sweatshirt with cargo shorts.

Seth flinched back when he heard footsteps and laughter down the block from him. Looking around, he ducked into an alley and hid behind a trash can as the teenagers returned to their car. He sighed and curled up into a ball behind the trashcan. What was he supposed to do? Unless this was all a really bizarre hallucination or dream, he was pretty sure he was supposed to be dead by anyone's definition of the world. Instead, here he was, still...something. He wasn't even sure he could call himself alive at this point. Seth cradled his head in his hands.

He looked up when he heard a small sound in front of him, like something dropping to the ground. There, on the dark, cool ground of the alley, lay a statue of what Seth presumed to be Link, from the Legend of Zelda. He knew there was a new game released for the N64 around the time his own game was, but he had no interest in it because he didn't own the console. He'd never played a Zelda game and was never sure he would.

Still, he stared curiously at the small statue. Its face was odd, not like the other images of Link he'd seen. Where did it come from? Maybe it dropped out of the trash can or dropped out of a window from above. He reached out to touch the statue but when his fingertips brushed against it, it simply disappeared and Seth's hand recoiled in surprise.

“You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?” asked a voice beside him and Seth jumped.

A guy around his age sat on the ground in the alley beside him, looking not at him but the wall across the alley from them. He wore a green sweatshirt and had blonde hair. When his gaze shifted over to Seth, he could see that the blonde guy had black sclera with small red pupils. Seth felt the hair rise up on the back of his neck. What. The. Fuck.

The guy was obviously expecting an answer, so Seth tried to clear his throat. He had a feeling he probably didn't want to get on this guy's bad side.

“Um, I guess,” he croaked.

“You guess?” the guy said and snorted. “Dude, you're covered with blood – and I think one of your legs just disappeared.”

Seth felt his still heart jump in his throat as he looked down. Sure enough, there was only a bloody stump at the end of the shorts. Seth felt his throat tighten and the other disappeared as well. Blood started to ooze out onto the ground, dirt swirling on top of the dark liquid. Seth's not-so-small panic attack was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder.

“Dude, you need to calm down,” the stranger said. “I think your limbs disappearing is related to how freaked out you are. I'm not going to do anything to you.”

Seth's left arm disappeared and he felt a scream bubble at the bottom of his already raw throat.

“It's easy for you to say,” he snapped. “Your legs and arm didn't just disappear! I just got them back, thank you!”

Seth flinched when the guy broke out laughing.

“You really are new at this, aren't you?” he quizzed and ruffled Seth's hair. “Like, how new are you? A few months?”

“Um, I'm not sure what you mean,” Seth said and watched his fingers on his right arm started to disappear. Breathe Seth, he told himself, just breathe!

“How long have you been dead?” the guy asked.

“A few hours?” Seth guessed and the young man sighed.

“Thought you would have been around longer than that,” he said and held out a hand. “The name's Ben.”

“...” Seth stared at the hand for a moment before giving Ben a flat look. Ben laughed nervously.

“Oh, right, you don't really have hands at the moment, sorry,” he said apologetically. “So, no need to be nervous, we're all dead here.”

Ben laughed and Seth just shook his head. He eyed his right hand, which started to become more tangible.

“So how did you die?” he asked Ben.

“Nu-uh, newbie, you first,” Ben insisted. “I have seniority here.”

“My step-dad cut me to pieces because I bought a game he didn't want me to play,” Seth said and with his right hand back to normal, dug around in his pocket and handed Ben the silver game cartridge. “He said it was too sissy, but I really think it just pushed him over the edge. He was already drunk and mad.”

“Pokemon?” Ben said incredulously. “Really man? Aren't you a little too old to be playing this?”

“Aren't you a little too old to be traipsing around in a Zelda costume?” Seth deadpanned. His legs were starting to materialize from the bloodied stumps of his legs and the blood stopped seeping into the dirt.

“It's Link,” Ben snapped. “Not Zelda. That's the princess, dipshit. Why does no one know this?”

“Cuz I didn't play those games,” Seth said. “I didn't own any consoles like an NES or N64. Your turn, dude. How did you die?”

Ben grinned wolfishly and Seth was taken aback when blood started to stream from his nose and eye sockets. It stained his lips and teeth red as he laughed.

“I drowned,” he said. “I'm from Minnesota. You know, 'Land of Thousand Lakes'? No surprise there.”

And just like that, the blood was gone.

“Why are you bugging me?” Seth asked. “Surely you have something better to do.”

“Sure I do,” Ben said, chuckling. “And I was about to go make some poor sap lose their mind when you popped out of that car that used to be over there. It's not everyday I see someone able to do that. Before then, I thought I was the only one who could do that.”

“Why can we do it?” Seth asked. “Other than, you know, being dead.”

“Might have to do with your cartridge here,” he said, handing back the Pokemon Silver copy to Seth, “and mine here.”

Ben pulled out a gray N64 cartridge from his jacket pocket. It had 'MAJORA' written on it in black marker.

“But I can only guess,” Ben admitted. “I didn't always look like Link, and I'm going to guess this isn't your original appearance either. So, what are you going to do from here, now that you have your legs back?”

“I dunno,” Seth said. “I was trying to figure it out when that weird statue fell in front of me.”

“It's the Elegy of Emptiness, thank you,” Ben said huffily.

“I can't really go anywhere like this,” Seth mused. “I guess I'm kind of stuck here until I figure it out.”

“Well, hey, it's good to have friends,” Ben said. “You wanna tag along with me until you figure it out?”

“I don't really have any other option, do I?” Seth asked. “Sure, why not.”

“Have you ever messed around with some of the newer websites like Google?” Ben asked. “There's some cool shit behind that stuff. Like, you wouldn't believe all the code behind it. It's really cool to see. I think you'd like it.”

“Yeah,” Seth said. “I think I would.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I’ve been working on a little one shot recently, and it occurred to me how strange it is to actually know a murderer, or even a victim. It’s not something a lot of us go through. Ann Rule was inspired by her former co-worker Ted Bundy to write The Stranger Beside Me, and I guess I’m inspired and driven by my experiences with both murderers and victims to write.
> 
> Two of my classmates murdered a family in their home one night not even a year after we graduated high school. The one who I was better acquainted with and even kind of friends with at one point was a honors student and sang in our high school choir. Apparently, the two had a friendly conversation with their victims before they gunned them down. They left a husband and a son without a mother and grandparents.
> 
> My freshman year at college, two of my teachers were killed by one of the teacher’s son. One was murdered at their home while the other was shot with a crossbow in the head while teaching a class. The son then killed himself. I was supposed to be in that class, sitting right where Jim was standing, but I took the day (which was a work day) off because I was ahead in the class. I’ve felt a lot of guilt over not going to class that day, and I’ve finally had to change majors because I can’t code in C++ anymore without feeling major anxiety. 
> 
> I still have trouble comprehending those murders, and the people who committed them. It fuels my desire to write, which in turn helps me process all that’s happened.


End file.
